I was going to post this in February. Then three months went by. Then I said, screw it, I'm gonna post it.

An unusual thing happened during NBC's coverage of the opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympic Games. A commentator mentioned that South Korea's rapid growth as a technology leader was inspired by the success of their next door neighbor, Japan. I listened carefully to that description as it was broadcast. I found it to be somewhat accurate. It made no mention that the Korean-Japanese rivalry had anything to do with Japan's brutal occupation of Korea. It was an occupation that got worse each decade up to and including WWII. While that struck me as a historical whitewash, I thought that perhaps the comment relates to South Korea since 1987, when South Korea democratized. In that respect, the commentary was accurate.

In order for its economy to boom, Korea's military dictatorship had to end (much like Brazil's had to end before its economy could briefly grow). When the junta folded in 1988, Korea's gadget and appliance companies were Goldstar and Samsung. Within 30 years Samsung would become bigger than Sony and Goldstar would become LG, a giant in its own right. Even as little as 21 years ago, the Korean government retained some of its policies from its totalitarian past and censored all materials flowing in and out of the nation to protect its growing auto and technology sectors. I knew graduate students from Seoul who, like me, were studying news media and journalism. They would request VHS tapes of news broadcasts from home, and Korean customs would watch those tapes, looking out for any news about auto worker union strikes - or any negative news about Korean business or economy.

So I heard the comment. I raised an eyebrow. I moved on. But apparently South Korea couldn't let that one pass. So they demanded and received an apology from NBC for the network's historical oversimplification and disregard for atrocities.

Now I agree, that commentary could have been written far better. It seemed scripted. NBC had time -weeks probably- to write blurbs on each nation as its athletes paraded into the Pyeongchang stadium. But if NBC had to apologize for that misstep, I thought, what are we to do with decades of misreporting history by television networks?

A really good example is one of the first I was taught by Professor Justin Lewis. When the Sandinistas held elections in Nicaragua in 1990, news networks described them as their "first" free elections. That wasn't true. While the Sandanistas were not keen on elections, they did participate in a monitored, free national election in 1984. But in the US, the 1984 elections didn't happen. I believe ABC World News Tonight had a piece showing Daniel Ortega dancing, kissing babies, and campaigning while a narrator described it as the first time Ortega ever had to campaign. He and the Sandanistas lost, by the way. The US interfered with that election, by the way.

Same with American Indians and their townships. Townships? I mean reservations. L.B.J. called American Indians our forgotten people in 1964, and The Guardian reported it again in 2017. Isn't the United States sitting back and letting its native populations wither and die out? Reservations are sovereign, we say. Sure, sovereign and set up to fail. I've been to Navajo Nation. I've seen poverty and squalor that makes West Virginia seem downright prosperous. Sometimes I feel like I've been to the moon. Considering how few Americans have seen a real reservation -even the ones who live in Arizona or Utah- I think that's an apt comparison.

And to a lesser extent, the US news media wouldn't need to go into the dark history of the CIA, our nation's involvement with at least five major acts of genocide (Indonesia, Chile, Argentina, East Timor, El Salvador), or the times we stripped the constitutional rights of our own citizens (during times of national crises, "panics," "scares," wartime, or just routine denial of voting rights).

But yes, South Korea called out a US network for its tiptoeing around the Japanese occupation and legacy of rape and murder, and the network quickly apologized. If only we could get historical accuracy from our media so quickly and so easily every week.

Here's another story for 2017 I didn't post until now. A Brooklyn site next to the Gowanus Canal is to be excavated. There's reason to believe it holds a Revolutionary War mass grave, dug in the aftermath of the Battle of Brooklyn.

The Battle of Brooklyn wad a bad defeat, but thanks to Mr. Glover of Marblehead Massachusetts, Washington's troops were able to make good their escape to the Jersey shore, and live to fight another day. By the way, Continental cannons were emplaced in Red Hook to strike the British fleet as it entered the harbor, but they didn't hit a thing! If they find a mass grave, the city, state and Federal governments should erect a fitting monument.

June 30 brings another leap second to our global atomic clocks, in order to account for the slowing rotation of our planet. I remember the first leap second I paid attention to, on January 1, 1988, when the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) took over the responsibility to scheduling and coordinating leap seconds.

When the United Kingdom finally joined the rest of Europe in adopting the Gregorian calendar in the 1750's, there were riots by people who were convinced the government had stolen two weeks of their lives in a Papist plot! A second or two, added to the year every now and then, probably doesn't represent an existential threat to the planet.

When I was about thirteen and entering high school, I tried to read Ms. Mitchell's racist screed. Needless to say, I failed, but not before I found myself wishing that Lincoln and the Union had let the racist bastards secede and be done with it. Gone With the Wind is more like breaking wind. Soon, no one will care about the film anymore.

I will argue to the end, that the 20th century started late and ended early. From the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in August 1991, the major map changes that defined the 20th century are easy to identify.

In additon to that, 1991 was one of those key years in which our world was transitioning to digital. From PBX phone systems, to the introduction of the GSM mobile phone standard, to the millions of peopkle that year who got their first email address and began to spend increasing amounts of time on the Internet.

1991 is still the most important year of my life. Think of the events. We didn't just have the end of the Soviet Union. We saw the first US-Iraq war (if you can call it a war). During the buildup to that war, US troops were temporarilly stationed in Saudi Arabia, which triggered Osama bin Laden to declare a personal war against both the US and the Saudi kingdom. Al Qaeda was founded less than two years later. The massacre of East Timorese civilians by Indonesian troops in the Santa Cruz Cemetery, marked the slow beginning of the end of Indonesian rule over the tiny, poor, predominantly Catholic island. A BBC camera crew captured the massacre. Had it occured just 15 years later, it would have had over a million views on You Tube. But back in 1991, it took word of mouth, emails, and the BBC World Service to get the news out and bring worldwide attention to East Timor.

We had cultural touchstones (or at least pop culture ones). The last album by The Pixies. The second album by Nirvana. Perhaps the greatest album by U2. The final excellent Star Trek film. The first $100 Million summer blockbuster, comlete with cutting edge CGI effects.

1991 was incredible. An orange and green Mazda with a comparitably small rotary engine won the 24 Hours of LeMans (the first and last Japanese-branded car to do so). CART, not NASCAR, was the most watched auto racing series in North America. Some Americans thought Zubaz pants were cool. America's GPS satellite network was already up in orbit. Satellite TV broadcasting and satellite radio were slowly being prepared for launch. And we were on the threshold of a mobile phone explosion and devices and prices began to shrink.

1991 had turmoil, death, but also promise. I can't say the same for 2011. The changes to our world's political map might change more than it ever has since 1991, with the fall of juntas in Egypt and Tunesia. It is still early in the year, but let's look at the subjects that are active right now.

As Newsweek editor in chief, Tina Brown, said back on March 17th, Barack Obama arguably has the worst inbox of any US president ever. What's in his inbox? Here's an incomplete list:

Civil war in the Ivory Coast

Civil unrest and a possible government overthrow in Syria

Crackdown on civil protests and the murder of civilians in Yemen

Crackdown on civil protests and the murder of civilians in once tranquil, Bahrain

A devistang earthquake and tsunami, followed by a subsequent slow metdown of spent fuel rods in northern Japan

A deteriorating state of affairs in Afghanistan, now in its 10th year of war and US occupation

Sabre-rattling and threats to the region either from or supported by Iran

A deteriorating political and humanitarian situation in Haiti

The virtual destruction of Christchurch, New Zeland, by a devistating earthquake

War on unions in Wisconsin and other states, brought on by a mix of state budget deficits, lobbying by the Right, and the refusal of the GOP to raise taxes on the wealthy. This has motivated the previosuly silent Democratic base in the nation's heartland and Atlantic coast.

The threat of the GOP in Washington to drastically cut the federal budget, and shut down the government in order to push the cuts through Congress.